Booked 3 months in advance "1 Acre 'Jungle & Beach Estate" - it is a HomeAway.com listing #363323 and paid 50% hard earned deposit amounting to $1, 575 USD. It turns out the advertiser, Kris Greven, is a SCAMMER and is actually not the owner of the place. She accordingly lost the lease and cannot pay back the deposits to renters. She points to the actual owners of the property, DICKSON AND ERICA GIL, who in her email description are "are the epitome of evil and scam. They are mailicous, phony and diabolical... and... are the ones sitting on everyone's money and my property. They are the dark hearted, lying two faced cons. . They robbed all of us, and they got away with it."

I have no means of verifying these allegations so I seeked help from HOMEAWAY.COM who purportedly is the "the world's most trusted vacation rental website". Turns out to very far from truth & reality. It turns out they don't do their homework to protect renters using their website and in my personal opinion only interested in advertising revenue. What do I get? -- an email from Donna of Homeaway.com that I copy pasted below. Be aware when you are planning of booking a rental from the website.. you will get no help at all when things go wrong. Here is the website's email - I replaced my actual name with my username:

Quad_12,

We understand your frustration regarding the events you experienced with this advertiser.

Please understand that our site is a venue for advertisement; we are not involved in the transactions between travelers and advertisers. This dispute would need to be resolved with the advertiser as they are the party who took part in the transaction.

We're sorry again for your experience and that this situation was not resolved to your satisfaction. We encourage you to continue communicating with the advertiser.

Regards,

Donna
US Trust & Security
HomeAway® | VRBO® | VacationRentals™

The apartment I rented through Home Away was uninhabitable. There was black mold on the bathroom walls and floors and the apartment smelled like a sewer. The shower didn't drain. It made the entire apartment smell and closing the door to the bath did not help as the bedroom was foul smelling as well. There had been a leak in the bedroom and the wall was buckled and also smelled terrible. We we were charged for 3 days, their "minimum") and at a higher rate than the weekly rate we had agreed to. NO one should be subjected to this and also have to pay for it. This apartment is listed and reviewed as 5 stars. Because I asked for my money back from the owner after not being able to contact him for 2 days stay and said I would submit a bad review, the review I submitted will not be published and other people will be subjected to this place.

HomeAway.com and their subisidary VRBO.com are engaged in false advertising. They want guests to believe that renting direct from owners will allow the owner to reduce the fee by eliminating professional managers. But owners who use the service want to eliminate the commission and get the money themselves. Guest and owner can't both get the same money. So that is the false premise.

Several years ago HomeAway raised $450 million dollars to buya nd buildng VRBO.com, CyberRentals.com, A1Vactaions and others. This has has been a disaster for advertiers (Owners and Managers). By overloading their sites with listings, the sites become unusable. Ad rates have sky rocketed but guest inquiries and guest qualifications have plummetted.

The only goal the HomeAway managers have, is to build up the thing big enough, go public, and cash out. They are not in it personally for the long haul. They are Internet geeks who don't understand the basic business premise that they must produce economically for advertisers. Hey even teenagers working at McDonalds understand it better than that.

Stay as far away from this company as you can.

I have had my listings with homeaway for many many years...and now I am currently with 4 listings. I have asked them to change one home from a 3 bedroom to a 6 bedroom, changing one listing in their database. They will not do this unless I purchase a new listing. They were so kind to offer me $50 -- leaving me to pay an additional $279 for a new listing. I understand that they do not want to "surprise" people with the new bedroom status of my home, and would like to have a new listing -- I am in agreement, but not at the cost of $279. No exceptions have been made for what I thought was a valued, long-term customer.